Sperm sellers preying on women who are desperate be mothers

Women desperate to become mothers are reportedly turning to social media groups to get sperm, where men allegedly are exploiting that desperation.

Key Takeaways:

• A new report examined a rise in men who sell sperm online, and how it's exploiting women who want to become mothers but can't afford in vitro fertilization (IVF) or to buy sperm through a clinic.

• Many of the men are serial donors, or insist on so-called "natural insemination" — sex, called NI online —which has resulted in women claiming to have been assaulted and raped when they refused.

• The practice raises more questions about the increasing acceptance of alternative fertility arrangements.

The Details:

The Standard published an expose on the rise of sperm sellers in the United Kingdom (UK), with women desperate to become mothers increasingly turning to online groups to find sperm donors rather than pay the costs of IVF or sperm through a clinic. “You’re excited and you’re not thinking rationally,” one woman, Christy, told the Standard. “I was holding on to potential donors, thinking that they were a miracle — but then they ended up being a nightmare.”

The Human Fertilisation and Embryology Authority (HFEA) regulates the fertility industry in the UK, and limits sperm donation to 10 families per donor to lessen the risk of accidental incest when the children grow up. Online donors, however, are not tracked or regulated, allowing men to father hundreds of children.

"[O]n social media, desperation for a child all too often outweighs the many risks that come with unregulated conception," Charlotte Lytton wrote for The Standard. "As a result, grim endings abound. There are reports of sexual assault, rape and being fleeced out of large sums of money as a result of these groups, which are, according to one victim, 'the perfect, unregulated platform for sexual predators and psychopaths preying on desperate and vulnerable women.'"

Lytton added that there are numerous dangers from the donors who frequent the online groups:

One, who claims to have fathered hundreds of children, has made repeated attempts at taking custody from their mothers and being named on their birth certificates, with multiple cases overturned by the courts. Another, with nearly 200 ... children, runs groups from several profiles and has also made racist and body-shaming remarks about women he has coerced into NI. These groups have also, at least at some stage, had members including convicted rapists and stalkers.

The groups also have given rise to a risk of sexual assault, according to Clare Ettinghausen, director of strategy and corporate affairs at HFEA. “To be frank, they are coercing women into having sex,” she said.

Through the HFEA, a vial of sperm can cost £1,500, whereas it's available for significantly less online, if not for free. “The prices are crazy, and I didn’t realise how detailed and difficult the process was as a single person," Christy said.

Zoom In:

One donor, who is active in these online groups, criticized some of the women who go online to buy sperm, saying, “There are a lot that are treating it like a spunk Deliveroo service." Many, like Christy, do not require donors to undergo any genetic or STD testing. Another donor said:

[T]he whole expectation of what the majority of recipients want is a complete contradiction to reality. [They] want a mature and responsible man to happily impregnate a financially struggling complete stranger after a short conversation and then completely ignore the fact that the child should have the human right to reach out to him once they turn 18. They want a guy who will travel up to three hours with very little notice but they don’t want him to be a total loser with nothing going on in his life.

The HFEA says selling sperm is illegal, and it violates META guidelines. Yet it persists regardless.

“We found it difficult to constructively engage Meta,” Ettinghausen said. “These prolific unregulated donors are very public, some of them are running Facebook groups, they’re not hiding. None of it’s a secret, they’re very transparent about what they’re doing.” Continuing to give them a platform is “facilitating these people breaking the law, and they should do something about it."

The Big Picture:

Regardless of how sperm is being obtained, these problems are endemic throughout the fertility industry. As Live Action News has previously reported, for example, serial donors are incredibly common:

In Australia, there have been multiple scandals involving donors who have fathered hundreds, if not thousands of children. A Netflix documentary, "Our Father," exposed how numerous people were fathered by one fertility doctor, who injected his own sperm into patients. At least two of the siblings did not know they were related, dated each other, and became intimate before realizing they were siblings. This doctor's actions are not an anomaly; over 30 fertility doctors in the United States alone have used their own sperm to impregnate patients without the women's knowledge.

There have been so many problems with the unchecked fertility industry that multiple countries in the European Union have begun calling for stricter limits on sperm donation.

Parents are increasingly learning that their children have hundreds of siblings, and as sperm is exported around the world to bypass regulations, donor-conceived children have begun complaining of being mass-produced. The number of women who are buying sperm with the express intention of becoming single mothers has likewise increased rapidly, with children being deprived of a father, as well as knowledge of their medical background and heritage in most cases.

The Bottom Line:

An adult's desire for a child does not trump a child's right to be raised by his or her married, biological parents. Research has shown for years that this provides the safest, most stable environment for children, both physically and emotionally. Using sperm 'donors,' who financially profit off what is essentially selling their future children, denies children the right to know their biological father, sometimes any father at all, and their own biological history.

A Harvard Medical School study found that 62% of donor-conceived children believe donor conception is unethical and immoral.

“I am a human being, yet I was conceived with a technique that had its origins in animal husbandry,” one donor-conceived person wrote in a book for Anonymous Us. “Worst of all, farmers kept better records of their cattle’s genealogy than assisted reproductive clinics … how could the doctors, sworn to ‘first do no harm’ create a system where I now face the pain and loss of my own identity and heritage?”